How many times over the last eight seasons have the Chiefs escaped doom? How many brilliant Patrick Mahomes throws, clutch Travis Kelce catches, devious Andy Reid schemes have frustrated the rest of the NFL when the Chiefs seemed beaten? Kansas City, which has reached the AFC championship the last seven years, always seemed to have some extra dose of magic that the rest of the league couldn’t access.
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On Sunday against the Chargers, the magic finally ran out, in the most painful and wrenching of ways. Kansas City lost to the Los Angeles Chargers 16-13 as Mahomes suffered a left knee injury that knocked him out of the game … and possibly much longer. At the same time, a combination of results around the league meant that Kansas City was eliminated from the playoffs for the first time since 2014.
“It didn’t look good,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid conceded about Mahomes’ injury after the game. He added that Mahomes will have an MRI to determine the severity of the injury.
Mahomes tweeted, presumably about the injury and maybe the Chiefs’ season, a couple hours after the game ended and before an official update was provided:
The Chiefs don’t have much experience playing with their backs against the wall … largely because for the entirety of the Patrick Mahomes era, they’ve never really had their backs anywhere close to the wall. The Chargers, meanwhile, don’t have much experience playing meaningful December football, in part because they’ve spent most of the last decade looking up at the Chiefs in the AFC West.
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Sunday’s Chargers-Chiefs game thus represented an inflection point in the AFC West, as the once-powerful faded and the once-downtrodden stepped up.
The Chiefs arrived at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday morning staring right at a possibility they hadn’t faced since Patrick Mahomes was a freshman at Texas Tech in 2014: postseason elimination in the regular season. The Chiefs still had a hand in their fate; a victory Sunday would have staved off elimination for another week.
But according to NFL Playoff Scenarios, a Chiefs loss (or tie) would set in motion a series of elimination possibilities — 37, to be exact, which included a combination of Buffalo, Jacksonville, Houston and Indianapolis wins. And when Houston and Jacksonville posted massive leads in their games, the Buffalo-New England game took on massive importance even as Kansas City struggled to create any kind of offensive momentum.
Mahomes did all he could early on to bolster the Chiefs. This year has represented both a career low in completion percentage and a career high in rushing yardage for Mahomes, two stats that together show just how beleaguered and injury-ridden this team is in 2025. Mahomes’ 12-yard scramble on the Chiefs’ first drive put Kansas City ahead 7-0:
A field-goal kicking contest ensued right up until the final five seconds of the first half, when Justin Herbert found Keandre Lambert-Smith for his first career touchdown with 5 seconds left to close to within 13-10.
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The bone-chilling game, with a temperature of 15 degrees at kickoff, ground forward, with injuries claiming players from both sides. And then, at almost the exact moment that Los Angeles took a 16-13 lead on Cameron Dicker’s third field goal, the Bills erased the last of a 21-point New England lead in Foxborough. Suddenly the possibility of elimination became very real indeed, and the huddled fans in Arrowhead grew extremely nervous.
Given chance after chance to tap into the old magic, Kansas City came up short again and again. After Mahomes’ first-quarter touchdown, the Chiefs couldn’t get any serious movement going, and when Mahomes threw a red zone interception early in the fourth — at roughly the same time the Bills again retook the lead in Foxboro for good — hard reality set in.
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With 5:20 remaining, the Chiefs took possession down 16-13, and in the course of the drive, the Bills put the finishing touches on their comeback win. Combined with the Houston and Jacksonville wins, that meant Kansas City had absolutely no more margin for error — win or be eliminated.
And then matters turned from grim to hopeless for Kansas City.
On the first play after the two-minute warning, Mahomes hyperextended his already injured left knee. That meant Gardner Minshew, who hadn’t thrown a pass all season, had to come in and guide Kansas City through the last two minutes. Minshew got the Chiefs into field goal range, but threw an interception to close out the game and the Chiefs’ playoff hopes.
The Chiefs close out the season with road games against Tennessee and Las Vegas around a final home date against Denver. The Chargers will go on the road to face Dallas and then at home against Houston before wrapping up the year in Denver against the Broncos.
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Mahomes’ injury remains a matter of concern; no information was available during the game. As he lay on the grass in pain, his teammates knelt nearby in solidarity.
Mahomes was last seen being helped into the locker room, apparently unable to put weight on his leg as Minshew attempted a comeback.
There’s no more appropriate image to represent the painful end to the Chiefs’ magnificent run.
